My Thoughts

Why Your Company's Training Budget is Being Wasted (And How I Learnt This the Hard Way)

Picture this: You're sitting in a sterile conference room in Melbourne's CBD, watching twenty-three middle managers pretend to be engaged in a "revolutionary communication workshop" that cost your company $47,000. The facilitator—let's call him Brad—is asking everyone to share their "communication superpower" while drawing stick figures on a whiteboard that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent.

That was me three years ago. And mate, I was the mug who approved that budget.

I've been working in corporate training and development for sixteen years now, and I reckon 78% of Australian companies are literally flushing their training budgets down the dunny. Not because training isn't important—it bloody well is—but because we're doing it all wrong.

The Real Problem Isn't What You Think

Here's where most business consultants get it backwards. They'll tell you the problem is "lack of follow-up" or "poor needs analysis." Rubbish. The real issue is that we've turned training into entertainment, and entertainment into training.

Last month I sat through a three-day leadership retreat in the Gold Coast where they had us building sandcastles to "explore team dynamics." Three days! Do you know what we could've achieved with three days of actual skill-building? But no, we got sandcastles and a hefty invoice.

The dirty little secret of the training industry is this: most providers are incentivised to deliver experiences, not results. They want you to feel good, give positive feedback on the day, and book them again next quarter. Meanwhile, your people go back to their desks and... nothing changes.

I learned this lesson the expensive way back in 2019 when I commissioned what I thought was going to be game-changing customer service training for our Brisbane office. Brilliant facilitator, engaging content, everyone loved it. Six months later, our customer satisfaction scores hadn't budged. Not one percentage point.

The Four Training Sins Every Company Commits

Sin #1: The Spray and Pray Method

You know this one. Send everyone to the same workshop regardless of their actual needs, experience level, or role requirements. I've seen companies send their entire leadership team to identical time management courses, from the CEO who runs six businesses to the team leader who struggles to delegate making coffee.

It's like prescribing the same medication for a broken leg, high blood pressure, and chronic insomnia. Doesn't work, does it?

Sin #2: The One-and-Done Fantasy

"Let's send everyone to a conflict resolution workshop and tick that box for the year." Mate, learning doesn't work like a vaccination. You can't inject someone with leadership skills on a Tuesday and expect them to be transformed by Friday.

The most effective training I've ever seen involved monthly check-ins, peer coaching circles, and what one Sydney company calls "micro-learning Mondays"—fifteen-minute skill-building sessions every week. Boring? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely.

Sin #3: The Outsourcing Cop-Out

Don't get me wrong, external trainers have their place. But when companies completely outsource their training function, they lose something crucial: context. That external facilitator doesn't know that Sarah in accounts has been struggling with confidence since the restructure, or that the Perth team has completely different challenges to the Adelaide crew.

Some of the best training sessions I've witnessed were run by internal subject matter experts who understood the business, the people, and the real challenges. They weren't polished presenters, but they were authentic. And authenticity beats PowerPoint animations every single time.

Sin #4: The Measurement Mirage

"How was the training?" is not a bloody performance indicator. Neither is "Did you learn something new?" or "Would you recommend this to a colleague?" These are feel-good metrics that tell you precisely nothing about whether your investment is working.

The companies that get training right measure different things. They track behaviour change over time. They monitor performance improvements. They ask: "Three months after the training, what are you doing differently?" That's when the real data emerges.

What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Seen It All)

After making every mistake in the book—and trust me, I've made them all—here's what I've learned actually moves the needle:

Start With the Pain Points, Not the Programme

Before you book a single workshop, spend time understanding what's actually broken. I'm talking proper detective work here. Observe people at work. Talk to customers. Look at your data. What specific behaviours need to change for business results to improve?

One Perth manufacturing company I worked with thought they needed leadership training. Turns out their real issue was unclear processes that made good leadership impossible. We fixed the systems first, then did targeted coaching on the leadership challenges that remained. Result? 34% improvement in team productivity within six months.

Make It Relevant or Make It Stop

Generic training is expensive therapy. If your training doesn't directly address the specific challenges your people face in their actual jobs, you're wasting everyone's time.

I've seen brilliant results from companies that build training around real workplace scenarios. Instead of role-playing with imaginary customers, use actual situations from last month. Instead of theoretical case studies, workshop the project that's currently struggling.

Create Learning, Not Events

The best training happens over weeks and months, not hours and days. Think of it like fitness training—you don't get fit by going to one really intense gym session. You get fit through consistent, progressive effort over time.

One of my clients in Darwin introduced "Training Tuesdays"—thirty minutes every week where teams worked on specific skills. Simple concept, but after a year, their employee engagement scores were through the roof and their customer complaints had dropped by 40%.

The Uncomfortable Truth About ROI

Here's something most training providers won't tell you: if you can't measure the impact of your training within three months, you probably can't measure it at all. And if you can't measure it, how do you know it's working?

I've worked with companies that spent $200,000 on leadership development programmes that produced zero measurable business impact. I've also seen $5,000 investments that transformed entire departments. The difference wasn't the budget—it was the approach.

The uncomfortable truth is that most training fails because we're solving the wrong problems with the wrong solutions for the wrong people at the wrong time. We're like doctors prescribing medicine without diagnosing the illness.

What Smart Companies Do Differently

Smart companies treat training like any other business investment. They set clear objectives, define success metrics, and track results religiously. They're not afraid to cancel programmes that aren't working and double down on ones that are.

They also understand that the best training often doesn't look like training at all. Mentoring programmes, job rotations, stretch assignments, and peer learning groups often deliver better results than formal workshops.

I remember working with a Adelaide tech startup that needed to improve their sales team's performance. Instead of booking expensive sales training, they partnered each junior salesperson with a top performer for three months. Cost? Practically nothing. Results? Sales improved by 60%.

The Vendor Reality Check

Let me be brutally honest about training vendors for a moment. The industry is full of charming facilitators who can deliver an engaging workshop but couldn't run a business to save their lives. They're performers, not strategists.

The best training providers I've worked with—and there are some absolute gems out there—ask hard questions before they pitch solutions. They want to understand your business, your challenges, and your constraints. They're not trying to sell you their standard package; they're trying to solve your specific problems.

If a training provider's first question isn't "What specific business challenge are you trying to solve?" run. Run fast.

Making Training Stick in the Real World

The gap between learning and doing is where most training budgets go to die. People attend workshops, feel motivated, return to work, and within a week they're back to their old habits. Why? Because changing behaviour is hard, and most training programmes ignore this fundamental truth.

Companies that get this right build in accountability mechanisms. Regular check-ins, peer support, manager involvement, and progressive skill-building over time. It's less exciting than a two-day retreat, but infinitely more effective.

I worked with a Melbourne law firm that introduced "implementation partnerships" after every training session. Participants paired up and committed to practising one new skill for 30 days, with weekly check-ins. Simple concept, but their skill retention rates jumped from 12% to 67%.

The Future of Corporate Training

The pandemic forced many companies to rethink their approach to training, and frankly, it was about time. Virtual learning, when done well, can be more effective and significantly more cost-efficient than traditional face-to-face programmes.

But here's the thing: the technology is just a tool. Bad training delivered online is still bad training. Good training principles—relevance, practice, feedback, and accountability—work regardless of the delivery method.

So What Now?

If you're responsible for your company's training budget, here's my advice: stop throwing money at programmes and start investing in systems. Build learning into the workflow. Create environments where people can practice new skills safely. Measure what matters, not what's easy to measure.

And for the love of all that's holy, stop sending people to generic workshops that promise to transform their lives in two days. Transformation takes time, effort, and sustained support. Anything else is just expensive entertainment.

The companies that understand this—the ones that treat training as a strategic investment rather than a necessary evil—they're the ones pulling ahead in their markets. They're the ones with engaged employees, satisfied customers, and growing profits.

Everyone else is just building really expensive sandcastles.

Bottom line: Your training budget isn't being wasted because training doesn't work. It's being wasted because you're probably doing training instead of developing people. There's a difference, and understanding that difference might just save your company a fortune.

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